Robot 6

Comics A.M. | Feldstein, Kurtzman estate seek to reclaim EC rights

Legal | EC Comics writer and editor Al Feldstein and the estate of Mad editor and artist Harvey Kurtzman have taken steps to reclaim the copyright to their early work under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 (the same provision invoked by the heirs of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster). Feldstein has already reached an agreement with the William M. Gaines Agency, which holds the rights to Tales from the Crypt and other classic EC comics of the 1950s; the deal will bring him a small amount of money and the freedom to use the art any way he wants in his autobiography. Kurtzman’s people are in the early stages of negotiations with Warner Bros./DC Comics, which holds the rights to Mad magazine. [The Comics Journal]

Graphic novels | BookScan’s Top 20 graphic novels list for October makes for strange bedfellows, with The Walking Dead Compendium Two at No. 1, Chris Ware’s Building Stories at No. 2, and the third volume of Gene Yang’s Avatar: The Last Airbender at No. 3. It’s an interestingly mixed list, with the usual sprinkling of manga (Sailor Moon, Naruto, Bleach), a volume of Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine compilations, and four more volumes of The Walking Dead. And bringing up the rear, at #20, the perennial Watchmen. [ICv2]

The Beguiling

Retailing | Peter Birkemoe, owner of the celebrated Toronto comics shop The Beguiling, talks about why he bought the store, how he has kept it running for the past 25 years, and what the future may bring: “I think bookselling is going to change a lot. I don’t see it disappearing within my lifetime, but I’ve played the last-man-standing game in many aspects of this before and I have a certain confidence that I can continue to make a living within comics as long as I choose to but that the form of that will have to change with time.” [Torontoist]

Creators | Jules Feiffer, who always seemed like the quintessential New Yorker, is putting his Upper West Side apartment on the market (asking price: $4.4 million) and moving to the Hamptons. [New York]

The Reason for Dragons

Creators | Writer Chris Northrop and artist Jeff Stokeley discuss their new graphic novel The Reason for Dragons, a coming-of-age story about a bookish teenager who finds a knight, on a mission to slay a dragon, living in his garage. The book is due out next year from Archaia. [USA Today]

Creators | Artist Mark Wheatley describes his comic Return of the Human as “The history of an intergalactic war, told in the style of a Ken Burns documentary.” He and writer J.C. Vaughn decided to use a documentary style for the comic, which is published by the digital service Aces Weekly: “So, instead of telling the story scene by scene, we are able to tell the story from the point 20 years after the end of the galactic war. We’re working as if we are pulling from historical events, photos, videos, interviews, artifacts, letters from home, advertisements, sketches, personal accounts and anything else we can think of. The approach makes everything we are doing seem fresh and new.” [The Morton Report]

Fort Knox

Comic strips | The comic strip Fort Knox will launch a storyline next week in which a character discovers he has prostate cancer; the comic reflects creator Paul Jon Boscacci’s experiences helping his father through the disease. [The Washington Post]

Process | Justin Erickson explains, with art, how he created the cover for the first issue of Steve Niles’ Criminal Macabre: Final Night/The 30 Days of Night crossover. [Dread Central]

Advice | Laurianne Uy kicks off a series of posts on how to run a successful Kickstarter campaign; while Uy’s focus will be on manga (she is the creator of Polterguys, which not only made its goal but got a Xeric grant as well), much of what she has to say should apply to other types of graphic novels as well. [Laurbits]